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Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

ca.finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#461

Post by sabellito »

mrtksn wrote: post #221
madeofpalk wrote: post #11

> Under the DMA, app developers distributing their apps via Apple's App Store should be able to inform customers, free of charge, of alternative offers outside the App Store, steer them to those offers and allow them to make purchases. To me, this is the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after. It is unfair that Apple restricts Netflix from telling it's users that they can sign up and pay for Netlifx…

>the most easily agreeable part of what the EU has been after It's also probably the most dangerous for Apple. It creates a cash incentive to push people outside of Apple's walled garden and show them what's outside. I really really hope Apple gets its act together, they are the greatest "the user experience comes first" company and they actually have great hard tech but they show signs of rent seeking behavior which…

"Show signs of rent seeking behaviour" seems like an extremely generous position. Forbidding your customers from even mentioning The Outside is full-on rent seeking behaviour, since its inception.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#462

Post by nozzlegear »

sapphicsnail wrote: post #372
fc417fc802 wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with your first point. Regarding TikTok though the argument was never (AFAIK) that they were actively breaking the law but rather that their structure and ownership posed a threat to US interests. That's pretty reasonable and largely mirrors China's stance against the US. If anything the surprising thing is how lenient western governments tend to be towards foreign corporations. They seem to prioritize free tr…

I find this so confusing. Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk are foreigners who are both demonstrably influencing American politics through media they control. What makes Tiktok different?

Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk are both American citizens. In fact, one of Murdoch's primary reasons for becoming an American citizen in 1985 was to comply with the Communications Act of 1934, which prevented him (or any non-citizen) from owning more than 25% of a broadcasting company.

Here's a piece of history from 1985 that talks about it: https://archive.ph/HlHrx

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#463

Post by freedomben »

kube-system wrote: post #453
freedomben wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless you're saying that people should lose their speech rights when they form a business? I tried to make clear I wasn't making a legal argument, but since you mentioned it I will address it, but first I'll just say that no I'm not saying that people should lose their free speech rights when they form a business. I'm not sure how you got that from what I wrote, but no, legally they don't and shouldn't (with maybe…

> I tried to make clear I wasn't making a legal argument I know which is why I used the word "should" to indicate moral hypothetical and not existing law. >I'm not sure how you got that from what I wrote Because you said that a situation in which YouTube exercised the right to moderate their own platform was a "total abandonment of free speech principles". But as you recognize, compelled speech is also a violation of…

Indeed, sounds like we're largely in agreement then.

> Because you said that a situation in which YouTube exercised the right to moderate their own platform was a "total abandonment of free speech principles"

True I did say that, and I'll definitely walk that one back a little bit. I didn't mean their moderation as a whole was the abandonment, I mainly meant their philosophical approach to it. (i.e. deciding that anything that goes contrary to the CDC/WHO narrative may not be discussed)

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#464

Post by phtrivier »

SllX wrote: post #417
phtrivier wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Meta specifically, although Meta as a monopoly on being apple to infrige this rule. (A long time ago, in a capitalism far, far way, America was against monopolies and cartels. Those days will come back.) > The DMA is not neutral laws on neutral principles What do you mean "neutral law on neutral principles" ? Does that exist ? I can agree on some version of "not a neutral law" in that it is "objectively" targeted…

> Not Meta specifically, although Meta as a monopoly on being apple to infrige this rule. (A long time ago, in a capitalism far, far way, America was against monopolies and cartels. Those days will come back.) I’ve been asking for years here and nobody has made a solid argument to me how Facebook has a monopoly in anything or how a social networking monopoly even could exist. It’s a competitive market out there. Some…

> I’ve been asking for years here and nobody has made a solid argument to me how Facebook has a monopoly in anything or how a social networking monopoly even could exist. It’s a competitive market out there. Some of their competitors are on the DMA’s hit list too.

This seems pretty convincing to me, given that Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp: [1]

> Facebook leads the pack with 3.04 billion users, maintaining its position as the most extensive social networking site globally. > YouTube follows with 2.5 billion users, reinforcing its status as the premier platform for video sharing and consumption. > WhatsApp and Instagram are tied in the third position, each with 2 billion users. WhatsApp is renowned for its messaging services, while Instagram is a favorite for photo and video sharing. > TikTok, with 1.5 billion users, rounds out the top five, showcasing its rapid rise as a leading platform for short-form video content.

In terms of social media, the only "competitor" at the same scale as facebook is tiktok and snap.

We might leave in the bubble that uses twitter, bluesky, reddit, etc... but their small relative to the blue site, for better or for worse.

Break up Meta into differents, apps, and suddenly the monopoly becomes much less obvious.

> and it’s a fairly neutral principle to state that “murder is intolerable in our society”.

Do you mean it's "neutral" because there is no "arbitrage" in deciding if someone is a murderer ?

Or that the principle behind it is universal ?

In this case, is it still "neutral" once your start talking about, say, self defense ? death penalty ? assisted suicide ? war times ? (or, if you're going to stretch it a lot, abortion ?) I'm not bringing it to say there is an equivalence, I'm saying you _will_ have people making the equivalence, and different people will disagree. It's called principles - no law say they have to be universal, and they're usually not.

[1] https://prioridata.com/data/social-media-usage/#Social_Media...

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#465

Post by [deleted] »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #34
popol12 wrote: post #22

I hope this will make Apple finally comply with EU law and allow app side loading on iOS. Real side loading, not the joke they implemented since iOS 17.

I would not hold my breath. They are adept at malicious compliance. Cook will do a cost/benefit assessment and will come up with another workaround.

[deleted]

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#466

Post by Ukv »

dmitrygr wrote: post #435
Ukv wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a range of anti-competitive behavior which can subvert that ideal, and as such there's regulation aimed to prevent it. Apple used to forbid apps from telling users about Apple's 30% cut or cheaper places to buy the app, for instance, hindering users from making an informed choice. Many of the policies in question are intentionally not publicized to end-users, often requiring first paying to be part of the dev…

> intentionally not publicized to end-users Apple allows no-questions-asked full-refund returns for two weeks. > requiring first paying to be part of the developer program They are all available right here, online, without any purchase requirement: https://developer.apple.com/support/terms/

> Apple allows no-questions-asked full-refund returns for two weeks.

That's the bare legal minimum in the EU. Many anti-competitive practices are not things consumers find out about within some short fixed period of time, if at all, and others are not solved by a refund even when the customer is aware of the issue.

> They are all available right here, online, without any purchase requirement: https://developer.apple.com/support/terms/

True that it does now all (including schedules 2/3 and the guidelines) appear to be publicly available. Looks as if this was done on June 7th 2021, shortly after the EU Commission had sent the Statement of Objections on April 30th 2021.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#467

Post by fidotron »

alxlaz wrote: post #455
fidotron wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're the Ivan the Terrible of bad metaphors and similies. They clearly anger you to an almost amusing degree. As I pointed out: > You can buy any number of in game items on iOS and then go and use those same items in the Play Store version of the games, and vice versa. To be precise you can: 1. Install a game on an iPhone 2. Sign into the game with account for that developer, or even using Facebook 3. Buy in game c…

All the metaphors I've used are yours, Ivan. Why would they anger me? I'm not the one who came up with them :-). What you've pointed out has no bearing whatsoever on what's being discussed here. This isn't about some stretched out definition of "payment system" that applies to those services that happen to have both iOS and Android client applications. It's strictly about what works in applications available on Apple…

You're making a lot of noise to distract from the fact it is entirely possible to use other payment mechanisms for digital goods to consume in apps, and that from comparison to stores for physical goods we established that promoting other means for purchasing from the app on a given platform is an unreasonable expectation, exactly like expecting Coca Cola served in McDonalds to be allowed to be labelled "available for 1 euro less at Burger King!"

Arguably their entire position with Meta is even more unreasonable than your positions here. No wonder the EU struggles in business.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#468

Post by antasvara »

stavros wrote: post #104
madeofpalk wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so - they’ve only been fined for the in-app anti-steering provisions. For the second App Marketplace issue, I think that’s just a preliminary finding and is going to take longer to work out > Apple now has the possibility to exercise its rights of defence by examining the documents in the Commission's investigation file and by responding to the preliminary findings

Hm, maybe, I'm just going by what the article says: > The companies have two months to comply with the orders or risk daily fines. Maybe they got it wrong, though.

I think you're both sort of right.

The orders in question here are 1 for Apple (the one that made circumventing Apple payments super difficult) and 1 for Meta (their ad-free subscription service). Meta and Apple have to comply with those within 2 months.

The preliminary finding on sideloading apps isn't subject to that 2 month compliance deadline from what I can tell.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#469

Post by mfld »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #238

US officials and businessmen keep on repeating the same thing: > The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards. But this is wildly untrue. The EU isn't hand-picking individual organisations and fining them because they're American, they're fining them because they're in breach of existing legislation.…

Another irony is that the biggest (business) beneficiaries of applied DMA would be other US-based digital services companies like Netflix or Epic.

Re: Apple and Meta fined millions for breaching EU law

#470

Post by makeitdouble »

walkingthisquai wrote: post #322
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #238

US officials and businessmen keep on repeating the same thing: > The European Commission is attempting to handicap successful American businesses while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards. But this is wildly untrue. The EU isn't hand-picking individual organisations and fining them because they're American, they're fining them because they're in breach of existing legislation.…

Well... Though I agree with you in principle, the DMA does target specific gatekeeper companies and the criteria for these were set conveniently to ensure no EU company is regulated by it. So I can see their point a little

I'd argue this style of concentrating power under a single giant company is mostly American style.

EU companies tend to keep group entities separate instead of running for absolute synergies. For instance the AOL-Time-Warner-Direct-Dish kind of merger is pretty much unheard of.

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